Who Discovered the Teeth in Ornithorhynchus?

Abstract

I SHOULD be very sorry to deny the credit of any discovery to Sir Everard Home, or anyone else, if any evidence could be shown of its having been made. Of the figures cited by Dr. Hart Merriam, that of the younger animal seems (as far as can be judged from the roughly executed engraving, with the assistance of the descriptive text) to represent the horny plates, showing the hollows from which the true teeth have recently fallen; that of the old specimen, the same plates after they are fully grown, and their surfaces worn down by attrition. This difference led Home to conjecture that these plates were changed during the growth of the animal—a view which was corrected by Owen (“Comp. Anat. of Vertebrates,” vol. iii. p. 272), by the statement that “each division or tubercle of the [horny] molar is separately developed, and they become confluent in the course of growth.” By the way, no one can have been better acquainted with the work of Home than his successor in the Hunterian Chair, Sir Richard Owen; and yet, in his numerous references to this subject (Art. “Monotremata,” “Cyclop. Anat. and Physiology”; “Odontography”; “Comp. Anat. of Vertebrates,” &c.), no trace is shown of any knowledge of a discovery which could not have failed to have interested him, if it had been made before his time.